Theodore W. Kheel

Theodore (Ted) Woodrow Kheel "is a lifelong New Yorker. Born in 1914 in Brooklyn, Kheel grew up in Manhattan. He was awarded a regents scholarship to Cornell, where he attended an accelerated undergraduate law school program permitting him to earn his bachelor's and law degree in six years. It was as an undergraduate, that he met his lifelong companion and partner, Ann Sunstein Kheel. The two were married the day after Kheel took his bar exam in 1937. The Kheels are the parents of six children, and the grandparents of eleven. Their extended family includes twenty-one Cornellians...

"Kheel's special talents as a mediator and his obvious political skills soon gave him the opportunity to move to a new war-time agency, the National War Labor Board, where he was initially hired as principal mediation officer. By 1944, he had been appointed executive director of the WLB with a staff of 2,500 who were hearing 150 disputes a week. Kheels work at the WLB introduced him to the most important figures in the labor movement and key government officials—contacts he would use effectively in the future...

"In 1949, Kheel was appointed to a part-time position as impartial chairman for an important segment of public transit in New York City, a position in which he would render 30,000 decisions through 1982. He also became a partner, in 1949, in the New York law firm of Battle, Fowler, Jaffin and Kheel...

"Finding the solution to problems such as the impact of automation on the workplace, community disputes, and protecting a sustainable environment in which mankind will flourish, to name but a few, have all been the focus of Kheel's interest, enthusiasm, and financial support. He was the prime mover, along with like-minded citizens and specialists, in the creation of organizations to investigate and try to find solutions to the more intractable issues facing society. The Foundation on Employee Heath, Medical Care and Welfare, the Foundation on Automation and Employment, Automation House, the Institute for Mediation and Conflict Resolution, and the Earth Pledge Foundation were among the most successful of such efforts. In the same vein, in combination with Price, Waterhouse in 1994, Kheel formed Prevention and Early Resolution of Conflicts, Inc (PERC). Two years later, Kheel and then Dean David Lipsky of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell announced the formation of the Cornell/PERC Institute now housed at ILR to study methods of conflict prevention and resolution."


 * Director, E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
 * Advisory Board, Partnership for Responsible Drug Information

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